


let you down

by jetplane



Series: Whumptober 2020 [8]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Past Character Death, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:41:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26906779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jetplane/pseuds/jetplane
Summary: Henry Grace gets into Rossi's head, and he feels responsible when the case goes catastrophically wrong because of it. Gideon visits Rossi in the aftermath and they talk.(takes place after 04x08 in which an unsub seeking revenge against Rossi tries to lure the BAU into a trap)prompt: where did everybody go?
Relationships: Jason Gideon & David Rossi
Series: Whumptober 2020 [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1946050
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	let you down

**Author's Note:**

> Remember 04x08 where there's the unsub (Henry Grace) who pretends to be a fan of Reid's and confesses to a bunch of murders (I didn't until I rewatched the episode)? But anyway, he's obsessed with the math and the Fibonacci sequence and that's how he picks his victims. He tells Rossi that they're playing a game and he's going to kill five people, all of whom are trapped in his house. The team finds his house and Rossi tells the unsub that they're going inside. Grace reveals that it's a trap and that his plan was to get revenge over Rossi by killing his team, but then Rossi shows that he's been bluffing and the team is actually fine. So that's what this story is based on.  
> (also, this is the episode right after Henry is born)
> 
> I know this story is all over the place, but I think some parts of it are good and that's all I can ever really say.
> 
>  _all these voices in my head get loud  
>  I wish that I could shut them out  
> I'm sorry that I let you down_  
> \- "Let You Down" by NF

Gideon closed his eyes as he pressed the doorbell. He heard the chimes echoing inside followed by the barks of Mudgie and finally, the squeak of the front door opening. The man offered his old friend a half-smile. “Dave.”

Rossi only nodded in return. He opened the door and gestured for Jason to follow inside, watching the way his friend looked around as he entered. Dave didn’t mind; there was nothing Gideon could profile from his house that he didn’t already know. Namely, that Rossi’s life was shit.

“Do you want some tea? Or I could-” He stopped himself before offering to make coffee. Coffee was for people who had jobs and responsibilities and reasons to get up in the morning. The last time he’d drank it was the last time he had been in Quantico. “I could also get you some water or milk.”

“Tea would be great,” Jason replied.

“I’ll boil some water. Make yourself comfortable.” Dave disappeared into the kitchen, Mudgie following closely behind. Jason settled into a chair in the living room and waited.

He returned about a minute later. “I just put the kettle on. It’ll be a few minutes,” he said. Gideon nodded in acknowledgment. He didn’t particularly care about the tea; he just needed something to cut through the tension. As it was, both men were one step away from getting trampled by the elephant in the room.

Gideon went first. “Erin asked me to come back.”

Erin. Not Aaron. Erin. “What did you say?” Rossi asked.

“I told her I would think about it.”

Dave nodded solemnly. “Is that why you’re here? I replaced you; you replace me?”

He knows better than to lie to a profiler. “Part of it,” Gideon admitted.

“So what’s the rest of it?” Rossi asked brusquely. He knew the answer, but he wanted to make Gideon say it. People never wanted to say what they meant.

Gideon snuck a glance at his friend. “You didn’t go to any of the funerals.”

“They were three months ago.”

Jason took a deep breath. “I know what guilt feels like, Dave.”

He crossed his arms. “Are you trying to make me feel more of it? Is that why you’re here, to get back at me? Do you-” His monologue was interrupted by the whistle of the tea kettle, and he shook his head irritably. “I have to get that. Excuse me.” Gideon frowned as he watched his friend walk away, wondering what it would take to get him to talk.

_~revenge~_

_“Vengeance keeps us sane,” the unsub said, quoting from Rossi’s first book in an eerily calm tone. “What a fascinating statement.” Henry Grace leaned closer to the profiler. “You may have your vengeance, as I am about to have mine._

_“What?” Rossi asked._

_“They’re never going to make it out of that house, David. It was never about that woman or those children. It is about your team.”_

_Rossi was on his feet, darting across the room before the unsub had even finished his sentence. “Garcia, get Hotch on the phone! Now!_

_Grace smiled calmly at his adversary. “It’s too late, David,” he said. “The minute they stepped into that house, they were dead. I knew if I kept prodding you that you would rise to my challenge.”_

_Garcia’s voice came in over the intercom. “Hotch isn’t answering.”_

_“I knew that you would insist on being in the room alone with me, that you would try to beat me. I knew you would send them all out there.”_

_Dave slammed the intercom button again. “It’s a trap; stop them!”_

_The unsub watched with a sadistic look of pleasure on his face. “But you’re not just filled with hatred, David. You’re also filled with arrogance. Hubris. Just like every other human being. Just like me.”_

_“I can’t reach anyone!” Penelope cried out desperately._

_“Try again!”_

_“They’re never going to answer,” Grace taunted. “You. Lose.”_

_~_

Rossi set a mug down on the coffee table. Gideon nodded his thanks. The two sat in silence for another moment. This time, Dave was the one to break the silence.

“Do you want to know what happened?” he asked.

Gideon shook his head, eyes distant. “I know everything I want to know.” The unsub, Henry Grace, had lured five agents into his house. They’d been killed, bodies disfigured beyond recognition, and Grace had died in FBI custody. That was all the public knew.

Dave didn’t care what Jason wanted. He needed him to feel the same pain, the same horror and guilt and grief that he did. “They burned to death.”

Jason raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“Chemical burns. It’s amazing what sulfuric acid can do to a person.”

Gideon clenched his jaw. He was no chemist, but he knew how dangerous the chemical was. And how painful its burns could be. “Why are you telling me this?”

“They were your team, too.”

_~torment~_

_Hotch, ever the stoic leader, had been the first one into the house. He kicked open the front door and rushed inside with his gun, looking around for danger. Jordan Todd, the brand-new liaison, was less than a second behind him, followed by Prentiss, Morgan, and Reid. It took exactly five seconds for Morgan to notice that the house was booby-trapped._

_Later, Rossi would find out that that was the moment he’d tried to call Hotch to warn him of the trap. He was five seconds too late._

_The trap sprang. Dozens of sprinklers built into the ceiling went off at the exact same moment. For an instant, there was confusion. And then there was chaos._

_The acid left Haley and Jack to bury an empty coffin. Hotch’s body was almost completely consumed by the acid, just like with Grace’s other seven victims. Underneath, they found what was left of Agent Todd. When the sprinklers went off, Hotch had tried to shield her from the chemicals with his own body. It wasn’t enough._

_Morgan was the only one to make it out of the house at all. He’d suffered severe chemical burns and lived for two days in the hospital before succumbing to organ failure. The agent had been close enough to the door that he might have been able to get himself out in time. If he hadn’t tried so hard to help get Prentiss out. Prentiss had been looking up when the acid started to fall and was blinded almost immediately. She’d tried to crawl towards the door, aided by the sound of Derek’s voice, but the fumes got to her first. Unconsciousness spared her from the worst of the pain._

_Reid had stayed conscious for several minutes, screaming and clawing at his skin until all his nerve endings had been burned away. The genius could have told you a thousand facts about acids and a hundred ways to neutralize them. But in the end, none of them were able to save him. None of it mattered._

_~_

Gideon crossed his arms. “You asked for me to come here. I know you haven’t seen anyone.” Rossi’s brow quirked. “I talked to JJ and Penelope. They’re worried about you.” Dave shrugged. “You know that none of this is your fault, right?”

He laughed hollowly. “Oh? Did they tell you that?” the profiler asked. “Because I see them every night. They’ve never once said that to me.”

Jason ignored the bite of his friend’s words and noted the exhaustion in Rossi’s eyes. “You haven’t been sleeping.”

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” In another lifetime, he might have said it in jest. But Gideon could tell that the profiler was completely serious.

His eyes narrowed. “Is that why you wanted to talk to me? For some kind of final confession?” David shrugged. “Okay.”

“That’s all you have to say?” Rossi asked incredulously.

“What do you want me to say, David?” For the first time, Gideon looked genuinely upset. “You blame yourself for what happened even though every other member of your team made the same decisions as you. And instead of using your life and theirs to bring some good into the world, you’re giving up instead.”

“That’s not what I’m doing,” he protested. “I’ve done - hell, I’ve done everything I could, Jason, and this is where we are. I’m going to make sure no one else gets hurt. My will is on the dining table; you’re the executor. Everything I own is going to the families and Spencer’s godson.” Gideon started to stand up. “Where are you going?”

Jason sighed. “If this is what you want to do, I’m not going to stop you.” He crossed the living room and headed for the door, then stopped. He turned around. “You can still come back from this, you know.”

Dave scoffed. “Sure.”

“It could have been worse.” Gideon gave him a knowing look. “You killed five agents. I killed six.”

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, this ending is weird and I'm not sure if I'm going to continue this story or not. It's not as complete as I would like it to be due to time constraints, (if you didn't know, I'm writing all of these stories on the same day I post them), but I don't know how much more there is for me to write. Let me know what you think.


End file.
